Emergent Research

EMERGENT RESEARCH is focused on better understanding the small business sector of the US and global economy.

Authors

The authors are Steve King and Carolyn Ockels. Steve and Carolyn are partners at Emergent Research and Senior Fellows at the Society for New Communications Research. Carolyn is leading the coworking study and Steve is a member of the project team.

Videos

Disclosure Policy

Emergent Research works with corporate, government and non-profit clients. When we reference organizations that have provided us funding in the last year we will note it.
If we mention a product or service that we received for free or other considerations, we will note it.

Assistant Edge

April 2015

April 30, 2015

The Appification of Small Business is a new research report from Intuit shows the extent to which small businesses have moved to the cloud, a trend they forecasting to continue (disclosure: Emergent Research contributed to this report).

Key findings include:

The small business market is a lucrative developer opportunity – Small business owners currently spend $630 annually on software solutions, In addition, 85 percent of small businesses are willing to invest more in the next five years.

The center of the small business cloud is financial management – On average, small business owners spend four hours a day online running their business. The top three online activities are: bookkeeping and accounting (65 percent), generating invoices and or accepting payments (65 percent) and managing existing customer relationships (58 percent).

Small business owners want seamless integration between solutions – four out of five (81 percent) small business owners say it is important that the different software solutions they use work seamlessly together. Increasingly this includes mobile solutions, with nearly half (43 percent) of small business owners using a smartphone as the primary device to run their operations.

I could easily list many more negative press examples from the last few weeks.

The reason all of this is happening is our labor laws have not kept up with changes in technology or changes in the economy. Simply put, more and more workers don't fit existing labor classifications.

Key quote on this from the NPR article:

When it comes to the future of the growing “sharing economy,” things are far from clear. Two California juries are set to decide cases that could have wide-ranging implications on the industry that has grown up around Uber, Lyft, and other car-hire services.

Plaintiffs allege that the companies treat drivers as independent contractors even though they should be considered full employees, which would require Uber to provide sick days, health insurance and other benefits. Judge Vince Chhabria, who is presiding over the Lyft case, wrote that the jurors “will be handed a square peg and asked to choose between two round holes.”

Chhabria wrote that because he believes the labor laws, which employ legal tests to determine whether a worker is a contractor or an employee, are outdated.

It seems all of this will only calm down once our laws are updated. This will not be a quick or easy process.

But there is a rapidly growing view that there needs to be a 3rd labor classification for workers who fall between clear-cut employees and traditional independent contractors.

The idea is to provide these workers some but not all of the protections of the traditional employee. Other countries, including Canada and Germany, already have labor laws covering this type of employment.

Driven by the controversy around employment in the sharing economy (especially Uber and Lyft), we expect similar laws to start to be enacted in the U.S. over the next 18 months.

Labor laws are not easily enacted, so this is a very aggressive forecast. But this issue is not going away and expect growing pressure on governments and public officials will force fast movement.

April 23, 2015

According to a new report from MBO Partners - Independent Workers and the On-Demand Economy - about 2.7 million American independent workers report using at least one on-demand economy platform or marketplace as a source of work or income.

The study defined the on-demand economy as including:

online product marketplaces provided by firms such as EBay, Amazon and Etsy and others (Craigslist was excluded).

April 21, 2015

I'm just back from a trip to India where I had the opportunity to visit several coworking spaces. Coworking in India is growing quite rapidly, with more than 100 spaces across the country and new spaces popping up on a regular basis.

In a country with the youngest population in the world, and an economy in constant flux, millions are bucking traditional companies and corporate-ladder-climbing to work independently. India is the second largest player in freelancing after the US, according to Elance, an online service that connects freelancers to projects, with average earnings of about $15 per hour and rising. Freelancer.com, one of the world’s largest freelance hubs, reported that even back in 2012 more than one-third of their 3 million users were Indians.

There's also a rapidly growing startup community in India. These startups need space and commercial offices are both hard to find and expensive in most of India's cities. This is leading to a rapidly growing number of spaces catering to startups.

Our overall reaction to coworking in India is that it's very similar to coworking elsewhere in the world.

Just as elsewhere in the world members are looking for a supportive community, networking and educational opportunities, an office infrastructure (especially excellent Internet service) and to be around like minded people.

This comes as no surprise to us - the needs of the globally growing numbers of startups and independent workers are universal. This is why coworking has become a global phenomenon.

One of the coworking facilities we visited was The Hive (pictured below). It's located in a three-story mansion in the Bandra neighborhood of Mumbai (used to be called Bombay).

Bandra is an trendy, artsy area and many of the residents work in the entertainment and creative fields. It's a good place for Bollywood movie star spotting.

The HIve reflects this by being both a coworking space and an entertainment venue. The night we visited they were having standup comedy, but they also do music and dance events.

Bombay Connect, also located in Bandra, is a more traditional space and houses mostly independent workers.

We expect coworking in India to continue it's rapid growth in the near future. In addition to rapidly growing local demand, we expect many places in India to become more popular with digital nomads.

Places like Rishikesh, considered the birthplace of yoga and where the Beatles went for spiritual instruction, are bound to attract digital nomads looking for a great location and a low cost of living.

April 20, 2015

The Shoe That Grows is a simple and clever solution to a massive problem - providing children in the developing world with inexpensive, long lasting shoes.

Ill-fitting or the lack of shoes is a big problem.

Over 2 billion people in the world suffer from soil-transmitted parasites and diseases.

Add in injuries and other issues that come from not wearing shoes or wearing shoes that don't fit and it's clear there's a need for this kind of product.

The Shoe That Grows addresses this problem by providing inexpensive footwear that expand through a simple system of buckles, snaps, and pegs.

It adjusts across five sizes and last five years – providing better protection and better health for children.

The reason we are covering this product is it's a really interesting example of small business innovation.

The inventor is a guy named Kenton Lee (pictured). He came up with this idea while working in an orphanage in Kenya.

He pitched it to a number of shoe companies, but none were interested.

So he created his own non-profit to produce the shoes.

We've long been fascinated by how small businesses innovate. Our 2009 study - Defining Small Business Innovation - defined 6 attributes that enable small businesses to innovate.

These are:

Personal passion: Personally invested, most small business owners are willing to try new approaches to make their business more successful.

Customer connection: A deep and direct relationship with the market and customers helps small businesses understand customer needs, identify new opportunities, and fix problems quickly and efficiently.

Agility and adaptation: Unlike large corporations, small businesses can quickly adapt to changing market conditions and implement new business practices.

Experimentation and improvisation: When pursuing new opportunities, many small business owners and managers aren't afraid to experiment and improvise, accepting failure as part of the path to success.

Resource limitations: Small businesses are adept at doing more with less. And these resource constraints lend to their innovative mindset.

Information sharing and collaboration: Small businesses traditionally rely on strong social networks to share information and inspire innovative thinking.

April 14, 2015

We quit using the term "work/life balance" many years ago. It simply doesn't fit the world most of us live in.

Instead, we started using "work/life flexibility". This term fit what we were hearing in our interviews and seeing in our survey results. People consistently tell us they want to be able have some control over where, when and how they work.

But even this doesn't really describe what's going on. What we are increasingly seeing and hearing is the traditional demarcation between work and home is going away. Replacing it is a new normal where work, home and life are much more seamlessly blended.

... work and personal life should be allies and that participation in multiple roles, such as parent, partner, friend, employee, can actually enhance physical and psychological well-being — especially when all of the roles are high quality and managed together.

We clearly see the blending of work and life in our research on coworking spaces and their members. Some spaces, like the creative industry focused Neuehouse, even stress their role of providing spaces that blend social and work activities.

The picture below, from Neuehouse's website, illustrates this.

Alex Hillman, of the coworking space Indie Hall, has long said coworking facilities are in the happiness business - which is another way saying blending work and life. His slideshare presentation How We Measure Success of Our Coworking Space contains much information supporting this point of view.

April 13, 2015

The study covers in detail what they call the 4 Myths of working in retirement. According to the study summary, these are:

Myth 1: Retirement means the end of work. Reality: Over seven in 10 pre-retirees say they want to work in retirement. In the near future, it will be increasingly unusual for retirees not to work.

Myth 2: Retirement is a time of decline. Reality: A new generation of working retirees is pioneering a more engaged and active retirement—the New Retirement Workscape—which is comprised of four different phases: (1) Pre-Retirement, (2) Career Intermission, (3) Reengagement and (4) Leisure.

Myth 3: People primarily work in retirement because they need the money. Reality: This research reveals four types of working retirees: Driven Achievers, Caring Contributors, Life Balancers and Earnest Earners. While some work primarily for the money, many others are motivated by important nonfinancial reasons.

Myth 4: New career ambitions are for young people. Reality: Nearly three out of five retirees launch into a new line of work, and working retirees are three times more likely than pre-retirees to be entrepreneurs.

These findings are very consistent with our work looking at Baby Boomer and Mature (aged 68+) independent workers.

The pet industry continues to grow faster than overall economy with he main driver being pet humanization, the trend towards people treating their pets as family members. See our Pet Trends category for more on this topic.